Max Ernst

Max Ernst was a painter German (or Franco-German for some) of mobility hobby-horse, surrealist then pataphysic. Max Ernst was born in Brühl, in Germany. In 1909, it starts to study philosophy at the university of Bonn, but it quickly gives up the courses to be devoted to its interest for art. In 1913, it meets Guillaume Apollinaire and Robert Delaunay and share for Paris, joining in Montparnasse of the artists coming from the four corners of the sphere. In 1918, it wife Shines Straus, historian of art. Their tumultuous relation will not hold. The following year, it returns visit to Paul Klee and creates his first paintings, impressions with the hand and joinings; it tries out various supports and materials. During the First World War, it is useful in the German army. After this one, filled of new ideas, it melts with Jean Arp and the social activist Alfred Grunwald the hobby-horse group of Cologne but two years later, in 1922, it turns over to the community of artists of Montparnasse to Paris. Testing constantly, he invents in 1925 the friction where he lets run a lead of pencil to paper on a sheet posed on an unspecified surface (parquet floor or another texture). This technique reveals more or less imaginary figures. It is connected with the automatic writing of the surrealist writers whom it côtoyait like Paul Eluard and André Breton of course. The following year, it collaborates with Joan Miro on the designs for Sergei Diaghilev. With the assistance of Miro, max Ernst launches out in the development of a new technique, scraping where it scrapes the pigment of the fabric. In addition to



The collages of Max Ernst rubbings after the World article Philippe Dagen

Max Ernst in 1925 invented "frottage" where he scribbles with a pencil and paper on a sheet placed on any surfaces (parquet or other texture). It shows figures more or less imaginary. It is not without similitide with automatic writing surrealist writers like knowing that Paul Eluard and Andre Breton. With the help of other artist, Max Ernst engages in the development of a new technique, scratching where it scrapes the pigment of the canvas.

Ay castle near Piacenza, in 1933, Max Ernst in Italy for three weeks, in a castle near Piacenza, it assembles 182 collages,

The french illustrated plates from the late nineteenth century black and white are for him as a subject inexhaustible. Iil in preparing the publication of five volumes, published from April to September 1934 editions of the gallery Jeanne Bucher.
The title of this graphic novel is A week of goodness or seven elements capital.

It is divided into days of the week, each characterized by a passion and a different element - water, air. The most bizarre dreamlike give them free rein, through symbols.


'A week of kindness is one of the major creations of surrealism. But the consultation of the original collages, it is capable of measuring the degree of control that Ernst at the art installation. They were exposed in 1936, in Madrid, at the initiative of Paul Eluard. They are finally again at the Albertina Museum in Vienna, loaned by Isidore Ducasse Foundation of New York, which houses the collection of Daniel Filipacchi. Exhaustive, introducing even a few collages that has not accepted for publication, the exhibition is a model of its kind. It opens with a sequence that leaves explanatory dreamer. The collages are presented in the company boards in which Ernst cut a naked woman, a shipwrecked, a riverside or bourgeois interior. The subtlety with which he agency images, to slide into each other and the suture is such that the eye perceives a perfect unity where there heterogeneity. Hybridization, the overthrow upside down, the breaking of scale imperceptible raise scenes where the unreal seem natural. Ernst makes the fantastic not only credible but normal.

This world in black and white live in fear and rage. The disasters are frequent, crimes too. The murderers have heads beasts and birds. The heroines are alternately threatening and overwhelmed - and mostly barren. This column fantasies and anxieties fascinates so, leaving rooms, we are all surprised that men should have the lion mufles and that Viennoises did not walk naked.

At present Exhibition Max Ernst to the Orsay Museum from June 30th till September 13th, 2009

Max Ernst, Albertina, Albertina Platz 1, Vienna. Tel.: 00-43 - (0) 1-534830. From 10 am to 18 pm; Wednesday up to 21 hours. Until April 27. € 9.50 .
Philippe Dagen